UMECUnited Mining Exploration Commission: A group of friends playing JumpGate-- "a MMORPG that launched smoothly, breaks from fantasy character setting, emphasizes PvP, and is the first persistent world space simulator that nobody talks about." ~Scorch

What im doing is putting the full time (bout a month and a half I hear) into getting all my learning skills to level 5. Its extremely monotonous but supposedly rewarding in the end. Ive heard many good examples of WHY to do it but im feeling a bit jipped of my money to be honest. I mean I cant do much in the game till those learning skills are done. I cant do complexes because my merlin can only take 1 cruiser at a time. NPC hunting is not very rewarding. All I can do is mine, which is only fun in a group up to a certain point.

What input can people give me on learning skills, because I was told to learn them back to back with nothing in between. Should I learn them in the proper order: back to back. Or should I learn one then some other miscellanous skill then another learning skill then another miscellanous skill etc.

When is it worth going for advanced learning?

ABSTRACT BALONEY
*shrug* okay, let's do the math: Strictly speaking, focusing merely on absolute numbers having higher attributes is a "good" thing. Ignoring charisma, let's look at how long an average player would have to spend leveling up the other 4 learning skills to lvl3 advanced learning, shall we? (it's 80 days to overtake someone who never trains any learning skills period)

assuming you had a starting character with 8 attribute points in each slot except charisma which was 3 (purely hypothetical; based on ~35 attribute points each race gets, including the 5 pool as well; ignoring implants)

Hypothetically speaking, for best results of training learning skills (exclusively), you'd start with the mem, int and learning purchases and go up to adv learning lvl3 in the first two, then you'd do the same for perception and willpower. (eve-i skill calculator has screwed up values for learning skill bonus so i'm afraid i cannot use it.)

okay, so that's 41.46 days. you now have 17.6 effective attribute points across all except charisma. That means you learn any skill that doesn't need charisma at 26.4 skill points per minute. that's 220% faster than if you'd not trained any learning skills whatsoever. Awesome, yes? well, sorta. you'll be doing sweet **** all during that time for actually training for stuff you can use. And to add insult to injury, you'll spend another 41.46 days just breaking even, although after that it's a cake walk (but that's 80 days and 3 million skill points later)

Think about it. 41.46 days training for their "conventional wisdom"...Now, let's do the math and ignore my leapfrogging formula: say you never touched any learning skills and had 8 attributes and no implants. 41.46 days would have given you ~ 0.716 million skill points. Let's repeat that. 716 thousand skill points (totally ignoring any leapfrogging formula; see below) that you could have spent on FLYING, or SHOOTING, or INDUSTRY or RESEARCH...hell, 3/4 million skill points is three lvl5 skills. my god, that's refining 5, electronics 5 and engineering 5 (just by playing dumb with zero learning skills)...or, thinking of it another way, that's NINETY rank one lvl3 skills

DOUBLE that to illustrate how long it would take a fully trained adv.learning lvl3 character to catch up with someone with absolutely zero learning skills

On this topic though to be honest it really doesn't make that much difference. If you do all the Memory to +9, then do all the Intel to +9, then do the learning to +5 it takes ~49221.54 minutes given a starting mem and intel of 8 and 8. If you do Memory 1, Intel 1, Learning 1, Memory 2, Intel 2, so on and so forth all the way till you get to the same point, Mem +9, Intel +9, Learn +5, it takes ~49170.37 minutes given the same starting stats of 8 and 8. A wopping 50 minute difference over a period of 34 days.

Bottom line: It really doesn't make any difference, so long as you do memory, intel, and learning before you do all the other stuff yer just fine.

SOLUTION: LEAPFROGGING
I counsel all n00bs to train their learning skills to 2 lvls below the skill level of something practical they're planning on training next. (ie. if you want electronics lvl4 then make sure memory, intell and learning are all at lvl2 before hand)

what this does is SAVE you time so you finish that skill before you would have without the learning class skills

This leapfrog pattern will not only get you that skill faster, it won't cost you time spent on doing the idiotic method of going hell for leather on learning skills with no rhyme or reason.

When would i consider it time to train the learning skills to lvl4? well, probably when you want to get a rank three skill to lvl5; As for when it is time to make the jump to the advanced learning skills? well, i figure whenever you're ready to train a rank 5+ skill to lvl5. That's when you can really think seriously about focusing on training learning skills to the exclusion of all else. Otherwise, if you listen to the "veterans" 'common wisdom' on this subject you're going to discover how REALLY long it takes to get to where they want you to be, and that's what kills alot of enthusiasm for this game.

Now, can we please start educating n00bs in the leapfrog approach instead of this abstract baloney of training learning skills to the exclusion of sanity? plzkthxdrvthru